


Life is a Dream

by glinda4thegood



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-31
Updated: 2007-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-17 05:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glinda4thegood/pseuds/glinda4thegood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dream, nightmare or . . . ? Written for Pirategasm Halloween challenge. It's a terrible life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life is a Dream

_For all of life is a dream, and dreams are nothing but dreams._  
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

  
Elizabeth has no time to dream.

Little Lizzie has the colic. Walking brings small relief to the babe, who cries without ceasing after sun goes down until, purple and exhausted, she falls into slumber just before sun rises.

Red-haired Robert, weaned these three months, wakes as his sister succumbs. He crawls to his mother’s feet and sits there complaining with a thin, tireless whine. He stinks of loose bowels and sour milk. Elizabeth wishes she had the strength to bathe and feed him, and she will, in just a few moments.

Robert howls. Elizabeth’s sleep-stuck eyes roll and open.

John William sits upon his younger brother, pulls his nose and pokes his pale belly. John’s dark eyes are brilliant with sly anticipation of a full day of sibling torture.

Elizabeth removes the tormenter and picks up her middle child. “Hungry, loves?”

Sun blazes through a crack in the walls, illuminating a froth of webs blotched with tiny corpses. She ought to wipe the mess away, ought to dust, to wash laundry, feed the poultry, find the goats. She ought to feed her children’s hungry mouths. She ought to wash herself, comb her hair, find a shift less stained with milk, sweat and earthy toil.

She ought to feel more anticipation.

It should be common knowledge across the length and breadth of the Caribbean that the latest baby has finally been born. Any day now a ship might drop anchor in her harbor. A visitor might wend his way across golden sand, beneath palm trees, to her habitation. The father of one of her children might spend a morning, an afternoon, a whole night in her bed.

Elizabeth can almost summon a waking dream. There would be laughter, the adult languages of voice and skin. There would be rum and stories of a time when her belly was flat, her breasts high, her legs unmarked by bruises and veins . . . of a time when her words were heeded by men who heeded few words.

Pandemonium just beyond the front door stoop brings her back. Elizabeth knows the meaning of the sounds. John is pulling feathers from the hens to work into his charcoal curls.

Robert howls again. A warm, sticky drop of milk seeps into the fabric around one nipple. Baby Lizzie will wake soon and ease the tightness in her breasts.

 _Is this a dream,_ Elizabeth wonders, _or is this life?_

 _For all of life is a dream, and dreams are nothing but dreams._


End file.
